


Forever Young

by thermodynamic (euphoriaspill)



Category: The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Abortion, Consensual Underage Sex, Cunnilingus, F/M, First Love, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Infidelity, POV Second Person, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-06-21 23:37:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15568866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphoriaspill/pseuds/thermodynamic
Summary: Drabbles requested on Tumblr.





	1. Chapter 1

“I just like you. In... like... a romantic kind of way.”

You stir your spoon around in your coffee cup, watching the cream form complicated swirls on the top, but you can still feel him rake you up and down with his eyes. “A lot of guys like me in a ‘romantic kind of way’,” you say lazily. “You’re gonna have to work harder than that.” 

He leans back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest, and gives you that condescending smirk he wears so well. “Come on, baby, I don’t usually have to _work_ for nothin’. You get to tell all your girlfriends you bagged Dallas fucking Winston, try that on for size.”

You look up at him from behind your lashes, trying to strike the right balance between being enticing and dismissive. “My brother’s in Tim’s gang, you ain’t exactly the first hood I’ve met before. I could prob’ly bring one home that’ll make my momma cry harder.” The side of your mouth twists, and you pinpoint exactly what’s going to make him blow his stack. “Maybe even ol’ Tim himself.” 

Tim isn’t really your type, if you’re being honest with yourself, though he’s more handsome than Dallas— he’s hung around your house often enough, and you know that beneath the devil-may-care façade, his world is all rules and regulations and hard edges. Your first date with Dallas, he hit the gas until you read a hundred on the dash, and he hadn’t even had a drop of liquor yet. 

He scares you, he scares you a lot. But maybe you want to be scared. 

Dallas doesn’t rise to the bait right away; he spears a forkful of pancakes and shoves it into his mouth, chews thoughtfully. “You ever had your pussy eaten?” 

The coffee burns its way down your throat, and you cough once, twice, three times, sprinkling the oilcloth with café-au-lait droplets— the waitress, who already wasn’t looking at either of you very charitably, gives you a glare that could freeze a snowball in hell. A couple other patrons snicker. 

“Shit, your cheeks are all red, it’s _sweet_.” He’s laughing now, a harsh chuckle, and you glower at him. “I’ve gotten some of Tim’s exes out of their panties. Trust me, start goin’ steady with him, you’ll never be able to say yes.” 

“Fuck you,” is all you can manage to say,  your voice still hoarse even after you clear your throat. 

“That can be arranged.” He licks a smear of syrup off his wrist, never breaking eye contact, and you swear there’s a live wire coiled in the pit of your stomach. “Just say the word, princess.” 

The hem of your miniskirt is riding up, revealing the milky-white skin of your thighs, stuck to the diner’s hot vinyl; your blouse is unbuttoned to the point where Dallas can see the lace on your bra; you’ve been around the block enough times that most of the rumors about you are true. “Yeah, okay,” you say with an imperious toss of your hair, grabbing your purse, “but this better be worth my while. You plannin’ on... settlin’ the bill?” you add after a moment. 

He watches the waitress out of the corner of his eye, crouched in his seat like a spring about to go off. “On the count of three, we run like hell.” 

You don’t know why you expected anything else. 


	2. Chapter 2

She’s wearing your ring around her neck and all you can think about is your parents’ shotgun wedding, how there wasn’t any ring there except the bruises circling your mama’s wrists. “I ain’t gonna marry you. Second my back’s turned you’ll go runnin’ to cheat again.”

“I loved you more than I ever loved anybody.” Her voice shakes violently on the last word. “I think that’s the problem. I get scared, you know? I feel trapped. Want someone else.”

“Love’s a neurochemical con job.” You lean back in the kitchen chair, your shirt riding up to expose part of your stomach, and wonder if you’ll wake up if you pinch yourself. “You’re just a whore, Syl,  _that’s_  the problem. How the hell do I know if it’s even mine?”

“Are you just gonna walk away?” Tears streak down her cheeks, making it muddy and distorted— she’s not the kind of girl that looks pretty when she cries, all her fake beauty falling apart. “I promise, Dally… if it was anyone else’s, I’d be goin’ to him.”

Yes, you want to say, yes, I’m only seventeen, I don’t have a fucking  _clue_  how to give a kid more than broken bottles and the end of a belt, but the words crumble like ash in your mouth and never come out. That’d make you even worse than your daddy, after you were born, after your mama died with a needle in her arm. He kept you— begrudgingly, violently, neglectfully— but he kept you all the same.

“So what do you want, huh?” You slam your fist into the table— she’s seen far too much violence to flinch. “You, me, and baby make three?”

“I want to get rid of it.” She swipes the back of her hand across her face, smearing the wet mascara and eyeliner, and suddenly looks like the girl you met when she was thirteen again— all knees and elbows, fearless, in perpetual motion. She didn’t take shit from nobody. “You gonna give me some money, at least? I oughta go to Oklahoma City, Kathy had it done there and she’s okay now.”

Abortions are expensive, but so is eighteen years of child support— you dig through your pockets and pull out five dollars in crumpled, torn bills. “It’s not enough, I know,” you say before she can sneer at it, “I’ll have more in by Friday, got a big deal coming up.”

(You were gonna use that money to get completely shit-faced, but. Well. Look at you being a responsible father.)

The last remnants of your conscience flare up as she walks out—  _the mother of your child_. “Wait,” you call at her retreating back. “Do you want me to go with you?”

It might kill her, going into the back alley, having some hack shove a coat-hanger into her or whatever it is they do; it’s illegal if she gets caught; she could at least use a hand to hold. If you were a better man, you’d pull her into your arms right now and tell her that she’s got nothing to worry about, that you two will be down at the courthouse by tomorrow afternoon.

But you’re you, and that’s the best you have to offer, and she doesn’t want it. “No,” she says, a bitter smirk playing at the corner of her lips, “think I better get used to doin’ things on my own.”

The rickety screen door carves trails into your eardrums as it creaks shut, and you don’t try to run after her this time. You groan and pour yourself a glass of your daddy’s whiskey instead, and then another and another and another, and when you’re hunched over the toilet vomiting, you imagine the pain is like giving birth.

(You think about the kid sometimes, later— bloody, small, malformed. A dead thing. The only kind of child you and Sylvia could create.)


End file.
